


The Lost Chapter

by Umi (umichii)



Series: Syndrome Trilogy [3]
Category: Original Work, Rebirth Moon
Genre: Gen, Magical Realism, Project Rebirth Moon, Superpowers, YA Mafia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-10-07 20:20:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10368627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/umichii/pseuds/Umi
Summary: A special anniversary chapter.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Previously: Jeanne has finally discovered about his lineage as the heir of the Simoni, Shaina is spying on the CEDeR (sans Meia and Herald) for Chris, and Chris is starting to get suspicious of the mysterious Romanov heir. Meanwhile, Syfer and Binder are bickering again. Helios stole the Rosenkreuz from Selene and ran away with it under Syfer's orders, but Binder sent Daniel and Bianca after him. (Chapters 11-12 of the original published version) Also: The Voice (aka Schyre) is already awake, so Inner Jeanne now has a neighbor inside Jeanne's head.
> 
> With the way I was going, I have somehow mixed all of the drafts together. Apparently the original published version is the second draft already.

The aura in the Rosenkrantz house shifted with tension. Jeanne watched the heated exchange of glares between Selene and Shaina as the two had once again fallen into a stalemate in their argument.  
   
“Asking Jeanne to take the training _now_ is suicidal,” said Selene. Honestly, Jeanne thought, he can think for himself, thank you very much.  
   
Shaina scoffed loudly. “Then when do you want him to take the training? When he’s kidnapped? When he’s in a hospital bed struggling for life?”  
   
Jeanne winced at the thought. He couldn’t understand why Shaina kept bringing up situations like that. Heck, were they even aware of his presence here in the study?  
   
Across the room, Mikhail shook his head, torn between siding with his old friend and his superior.  
   
“Guys,” Jeremy interrupted, his solemn voice slicing the tension like a hot, butter knife. “Let Jeanne decide for himself what he’s going to do with his powers.”  
   
Internally, Jeanne cheered as someone had finally noticed him.  
   
“This is his power. He’s the only one who can do whatever he wants with it. As far as we are concerned, we’re here to make sure that _that power_ doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. We’re here as the protectors. That’s the duty of the heirs to their heart. That’s what being heirs of the Niebelheim coven is.”  
   
“Big words for the guy who’s been running from said duty for the past two years,” Shaina quipped snidely. Jeremy scowled in reply, the angry retort in mind only held back by a firm grip on his arm from Armand.  
   
“In case all of you forgot,” the blond Italian reminded, “we’re here to decide on who will train Jeanne and where we can train him properly and secretly.”  
   
“I thought we already established the fact that he’s not going to train unless he wants to?” Selene cut in.  
   
Jeanne felt his left cheek twitched in annoyance. “I wonder why all of you kept on pretending I’m not present.” He was definitely not incapable of speaking for himself.  
   
As expected, all heads turned, and it irked Jeanne even more when surprise was only what he could see in their faces. Did he look like some spineless idiot who can’t stand up for himself? He might be a pushover especially when it comes to his friends, but bloody hell, that didn’t mean he’s a doormat they can just drag around and step on. He can make decisions for himself. He didn’t need _anyone_ to dictate how he should live his life. “I can decide for myself, thank you very much.”  
   
He stared with angry, narrowed eyes at each person present in the Rosenkrantz’s great study room. Everybody just stared back with wide eyes, all of them definitely startled by his bold statement. They must not have expected him to talk back, he supposed, and he _hated_ it when something like that happened.  
   
Selene was the one who broke the silence that had somehow enveloped them. “What do you mean, Jeanne?”  
   
_Yes, Jeanne,_ the voice in the back of his head hissed. Jeanne’s head suddenly jerked in response. He hadn’t heard that bloody voice talk for two days that he almost forgot about it. _What exactly do you mean?_  
   
He didn’t know. He didn’t have a single fucking clue on what to do. Everything was happening too fast lately. He could barely remember a single day since yesterday. One day he was dreading about the day, the next he was suddenly thrust into a freak world.  
   
_I don’t know._  
   
“I’ll do it.”  
   
And the silence exploded into a huge verbal battlefield, and Jeanne sat quietly in his corner, staring blankly into Selene’s worried gaze, her gray eyes only rattling the chains he had tightly wound around that sinister entity in his mind. _I’m screwed._  
   
The voice laughed menacingly, sending chills down his back.  
   
\--  
   
“Have you contacted him yet?”  
   
“No, sir.”  
   
Syfer gritted his teeth in frustration. The bug they had planted in the car driving Helios to the Simoni estate lost signal the moment it was a mile away from the Simoni’s borders, and now, they could barely locate the car through GPS. He would have known quite easily if the car got hijacked or something. But to vanish in the blink of an eye? Impossible.  
   
Even worse, they could not patch a connection with Helios’ emergency line, and since then, Syfer had been hoping nothing disastrous happened to his best agent.  
   
“Sir! Contact made!”  
   
_Finally!_  
   
Releasing a breath of relief, the young general jumped over the raining of the captain’s balcony and grabbed the receiver, his heart beating wildly against its cage as he prayed Helios was all right.  
   
“Hello?”  
   
“How clever of you, dearest brother.”  
   
Syfer froze in silence as he felt the room’s temperature plummeted down to absolute zero.  
   
“If you think I will just let you have the journal all to yourself, think again.” The cold, sharp voice spoke through the receiver with a hint of threat, and Syfer knew his brother was definitely serious. “If I were you though, I will hand it over now. Especially if you treasure his life.”  
   
The sound of a _click_ told him the other line disconnected already, but Syfer clutched onto the receiver, not willing to hang it up just yet.  
   
“Sir...”  
   
Questions whirled inside his head like a storm, every image his mind could conjure flashing wildly. He had given the journal to Helios so he could leave it in the Simoni’s hands, but if Helios was ambushed on the way with no journal to give...  
   
Who had the journal?  
   
\--  
   
The empty lot behind the Rosenkrantz land stretched out like a barren wasteland, the formerly majestic castle’s creating a huge shadow over them. Not even a blade of grass in the great expanse of dried earth could be seen. All that was left around them were debris and rocks. It looked like the aftermath of some great medieval war, only Zide knew what had really happened here.  
   
And it wasn’t pretty at all. He banished the thought immediately before it could bring back any memories from his shady childhood. He returned his attention to the land and briefly decided it did seem like the ideal place to hide something.  
   
Memories of the journal’s content replayed in his mind like a film reel. _The blood of the Forefather beneath Mother it rests._ Unless the Mother the riddle spoke of was not the Rosenkrantz, then Zide had no idea what else it could be.  
   
Beside him, Ivan loosened the knot of his tie. “Shall we start digging?” the huge bodyguard asked as he brought down the mouth of his shovel against the earth. Zide grinned in amusement before picking up his own shovel as well.  
   
“This better be good.” Because if it wasn’t, the coven would be facing a trouble bigger more than twice its own size.  
   
\--  
   
The afternoon sunlight was the only source of light in the Council office, streaming in through the large glass window behind the president’s chair. Chris watched Shaina fidget around, the annoyance and frustration evident in her face. She had just returned from her meeting with Rosenkrantz and her own gang of misfits, and hearing that Jeremy Reiner is in fact a part of the coven only made his headache worse. He didn’t even bother asking about that bloody Vergessen’s involvement.  
   
“How do they even expect to accomplish this?”  
   
Shaina shook her head, frowning. “I don’t even want to know. Rosenkrantz is clearly supporting whatever the boy wants and Reiner... God knows what goes through that guy’s head.”  
   
Finally, the Council secretary collapsed on the couch, resting her head on the armrest. “I honestly do not know if we can trust him.”  
   
“Best not to,” was Chris’s instant reply. “We’re still not sure of his motives. If he had lied to us about his real identity, how certain can we be that this isn’t another lie as well?”  
   
“He didn’t _exactly_ lie to us...”  
   
“He gave us a false identity. That constitutes to a lie.”  
   
“Chris.” Shaina sighed. “If you have been living half of your life as a fugitive, you’d be using a false identity as well. Giving away your real name, especially if you’re a part of this coven, is the last thing you’ll have in mind.”  
   
Hearing that stung his pride more painfully that he’d like to admit; Reiner’s case was too similar to his. He suddenly felt hypocritical for even calling Jeremy a liar. Truth to be told, between the two of them, Chris was the bigger liar. At least Reiner’s friends know about his real identity. Chris’s so-called best friend barely knows anything about him beyond what’s presented in the surface.  
   
“Am I being hypocritical?” he asked aloud and regretted it immediately. That was a complete stupid question. But Shaina just stared at him without any trace of criticism in her eyes. Then she shrugged and rolled to her side, facing him.  
   
“What do you think?”  
   
“Terrible.”  
   
“I can’t blame you.”  
   
“We are so alike, yet we are not,” he whispered wistfully as he leaned back on his chair, swivelling to the side to watch the setting sun. “If Reiner wasn’t so afraid of his own family, he would have the entire Ægis under his command. We would not be having this war at all.”  
   
“Quite the contrary, actually.”  
   
Chris snapped his gaze away to glance at Shaina. She had risen up from the couch, standing with a straight back. He raised an eyebrow, silently inquiring her thought.  
   
“Look at it this way,” she began to explain, “Reiner’s disappearance brought discord between the two Hart brothers who initially worked together to get rid of him. By dodging the bullet, Reiner has the advantage of striking them now that they’re too distracted with each other.”  
   
“Question is if the two brothers were ignorant enough not to see through his plan.”  
   
Shaina smiled, the first real smile since she had entered the Council office. “The Lord Hart is too busy tailing the other heirs and making sure none of them turned against him. The Reaper is dead set on acquiring the journal and reviving the Simoni family. Not only that, neither of the two has any idea just _who_ Reiner really is. They don’t know their own relative, Chris. They don’t know the _face_ of Jeremiah Hart.”  
   
Frowning, Chris leaned forward in his seat. His mind whirred back to life. The pieces of Reiner’s puzzle were just beginning to fall into places.  
   
“Reiner is their blood relative. How can they not know?”  
   
“When Reiner run away, he was only a child. Someone had to help, right? That someone helped in hiding him, and up until now, he still had that man’s family’s support. You have to remember another key player in this war, Chris. The _other_ key player.”  
   
_Who..._  
   
Then realization dawned on him and the horror sunk in like a huge boulder. The frown on Chris face turned darker as he finally figured just what Shaina was insinuating.  
   
“Romanov.”  
   
\--  
   
“Is this really alright, boss?” Ivan asked for the umpteenth time since they started digging. Yet despite the hesitation in his voice, his hands gripped the shovel’s staff surely.  
   
Shrugging, Zide continued digging. He had already removed his uniform’s jacket, shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows. They were both dusted everywhere with dirt, and he pitied the maid that does Ivan’s laundry.  
   
“The end justifies the mean,” he answered, also for the umpteenth time. Ivan smirked as he too finally removed his coat. His standard black tie was wrapped tightly around his right hand.  
   
“Spoken like a true Romanov.”  
   
Zide couldn’t help but agree.  
   
After a few more hours of digging, none of the X marks they had etched on the soil was left. They stood waist-deep in the last pit they had made, Zide’s dirt-covered Zegna shoes making crunching sound every time he brought the shovel down. Next time, he’d change out of his uniform to save himself the mess. Jonathan will throw a fit if he found out Zide had ruined another expensive pair. It was bad enough Zide kept insisting on having Zegna for school shoes.  
   
Ivan stopped as the end of his shovel hit something hard and solid. He repeated the action, then again, he hit it. Zide watched the shovel in awe. _Jackpot._  
   
Crouching, Zide dug up the rest with bare hands until nails scratched metal. With a huge grin, he pulled the forgotten Niebelheim journal from the depths of the earth, its old, silver covering glinting under the setting sun as his finger traced the engraving on its spine.  
   
_The blood of the Forefather..._  
   
Every page of this book records the crime and atrocities committed by the coven without sparing any detail—the blood their forefathers shed.  
   
“Lucian is going to owe me a lot.”  
   
Ivan nodded in agreement. “The Big Boss won’t be happy at all.”  
   
No, he definitely wouldn’t be. Not when the Romanov heir himself had both the Rosenkrantz journal and the Niebelheim journal, and Zide as sure as hell had no plans of handing it over to anyone.


End file.
